Recently in Games
Fan replica of Fallout Plasma Rifle
In celebration of the imminent release of the game Fallout: New Vegas, Ryan Palser made a replica of the A3-21 Plasma Rifle from Fallout 3. As Ryan says, "It is one of the only weapons still manufactured after the great war." He's posted a fascinating series of build photos over at Flickr. A3-21 Plasma Rifle
Voting machine hacked to run Pac-man
Over at the Submitterator, lbigbadbob points us to this video of a Sequoia AVC Edge touch-screen DRE voting machine hacked to, er, play Pac-man. This was done without breaking any of the tamper-evident seals. Nice work, J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan, and Ariel J. Feldman, Princeton University! From the project page:
How did you reprogram the machine?PAC-MAN on the Sequoia AVC-Edge DRE voting machineThe original election software used the psOS+ embedded operating system. We reformatted the memory card to boot DOS instead. (Update: Yes, it can also run Linux.) Challenges included remembering how to write a config.sys file and getting software to run without logical block addressing or a math coprocessor. The entire process took three afternoons.
Why PAC-MAN?
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the iconic arcade game, we reprogrammed the AVC Edge to run Pac-Man. It uses MAME to emulate the original hardware. (We own the electronics from a real Pac-Man machine.) We could have reprogrammed it to steal votes, but that's been done before, and Pac-Man is more fun!
Max Capacity [AM] has up a fantastic set on Flickr of pixel-art skyscrapers and cityscapes. [via Mituk]
[photo courtesy lehighvalleylive.com, click for large size]
Visitors to the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Big Time carnival last week in Roseto, PA (a small borough, population 1600), were invited to play "Alien Attack," a midway game shown above in which you shoot an effigy of U.S. president Barack Obama. Six shots for $5! Note the presidential seal belt-buckle (all presidents wear this), the target on the forehead, and the "Health Bill" scroll he's clutching. Oh, and the Troll Doll with a KISS t-shirt? Nice touch.
The local paper got an awful lot of mileage out of the story. Carny operator Irvin L. Good Jr., president of Hellertown, PA-based Goodtime Amusements, was adamant that the game was not a representation of the president—at least he was 'til the secret service guys showed up:
"Yes, a woman talked to me about it," Good said today. "She said she was offended by it. I said if you are, you might want to be. But you're interpreting it as being Obama. We're not interpreting it as Obama. The name of the game is 'Alien Leader.' If you're offended, that's fine, we duly note that." When it was suggested the health bill and presidential seal might lead players to believe the game did depict Obama, Good said, "You may be right there."
The entire original article is pure awesome.
Incidentally, lehighvalleylive.com might just be my favorite new news source. The "Obama game outrage" coverage blew up last week, but today the paper reports even more local crazytime: "Bethlehem Township, Pa., police today released a surveillance photo of a woman dressed in a clown suit who on Friday allegedly robbed a township bank."
She told police she had been abducted, and was forced to rob the bank by an unknown man who threatened to kill her and her children. Hey, at least he didn't make her take bong hits.
From the New York Times, a stat sure to shock the misogynist trolls that swarm gaming sites: "Women [...] outpace men in photo sharing and shopping, and in what may come as a surprise, gaming, favoring casual puzzle, card and board games. Female gamers over 55 spend the most time online gaming of any demographic by far and are nearly as common as the most represented group, males 15 to 24." Granted, we may be talking Farmville, not Call of Duty, but still... — Xeni • Comments: 35
Real world R/C car "video game"
Over at our Submitterator, BB pal Gareth Branwyn points us to Racer, Malte Jehmlich's real world R/C car "video game." It consists of a fantastic cardboard racetrack and arcade game cockpit. The driver sitting in the cockpit looks at a POV display of a camera mounted on the vehicle. Racer 0.2 (via MAKE: Online)
Via Submitterator, pasq242 points to Retrocovered, Brendan Becker's chiptuney NES cover album of classic songs by The Cars, Men Without Hats, U2 and others. Download. — Rob • 1 Comment
Matt Marchini's designed the game I always wanted to be playing while I was playing The Oregon Trail. Alas, it's just a concept gallery. [Thanks, Judson!]
Gratuitous Space Battles on Mac, Osmos on iPhone
The wondefully-named Gratuitous Space Battles, a visceral and compelling PC game wherein ridiculously epic naval engagements are meticulously planned--but not directly controlled--is now available for Mac. I've often thought that it would make an awesome mobile game, but creator Cliff Harris says that fitting it into the iPad's RAM is a challenge for the devs. While they're working on that, check out Osmos, another recent indie hit that that runs on Windows, OSX and Linux, and just made its way into your pocket too. I played through this recently; it's a meditation on life, the ptolemaic model of the universe, and screaming bug-eyed frustration.
Ed Fries, former VP of game publishing at Microsoft, has created an Atari 2600 version of Halo. He describes in detail the challenges of developing for the ancient and extremely limited platform. But the results are superb.
Halo Goes Old-School [IGN via submitterator. Thanks, RevRight!]
Here's the story of how this game came about [Atari Age via Waxy]
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Mark
Read free sample chapters from my new book, Made By Hand.
Cory
Latest novel: For the Win
[Donate a copy to a library or school]
Australia: World Science Fiction Convention/Melbourne Writers Festival, Sept 2-5
Germany: Little Brother tour, Sept 13-23
Netherlands: PICNIC/Bits of Freedom (Dutch Makers launch), Sept 23-25
Xeni
Check out Boing Boing Video's YouTube channel, full of video goodness.
Rob
